Tag Archives: recovery residence

I shock friends and colleagues from time to time by telling them that, “Did you hear…. from now on, insurance is no longer going to cover the cost of a hospital stay associated with any medical procedure, and that the costs of room and board while in post-surgical recovery all must come out of pocket.”

The look of incredulity and anger on their faces is priceless.

I entertain the discussion for a while and let it play out, enjoying listening to all of the justifications why that is abhorrent public policy (and equally bad health care).

Only afterwards, I take the time to tell them that, while I was joking, that it really isn’t a joke when it comes to mental health, behavioral health, and addiction treatment; that after detoxification (and for the lucky few, inpatient residential treatment), that the vast majority of people entering the drug and alcohol treatment space will be forcibly placed by their insurance carriers into an outpatient program but will not cover the necessary costs of a properly trained and supervised recovery residence.

At this point in my experience in this space, I am no longer surprised when they start to try to make a distinction.

However, in a news report that was admittedly surprising to me, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in prepared remarks (as reported by ModernHealthcare.com) that Medicaid may soon allow hospitals and health systems to directly pay for housing, healthy food or other solutions for the “whole person.”

What?!?!

“What if we gave organizations more flexibility so they could pay a beneficiary’s rent if they were in unstable housing, or make sure that a diabetic had access to, and could afford, nutritious food,” Azar said in a speech supported by the Hatch Foundation for Civility and Solutions and Intermountain Healthcare.

Azar said the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation is looking “to move beyond existing efforts to partner with social services groups and try to manage social determinants of health as they see appropriate…. If that sounds like an exciting idea … I want you to stay tuned to what CMMI is up to.”

“We believe we could spend less money on healthcare—and, most important, help Americans live healthier lives—if we did a better job of aligning federal health investments with our investments in non-healthcare needs,” he said. According to ModernHealthcare.com, Azar didn’t elaborate on when the model would be launched, but the program could help Medicaid enrollees who need housing.

Granted, the discussion related mostly to seniors, medically-necessary improvements to homes, and home health care visits:

“These interventions can keep seniors out of the hospital, which we are increasingly realizing is not just a cost saver but actually an important way to protect their health, too,” Azar said. “If seniors do end up going to the hospital, making sure they can get out as soon as possible with the appropriate rehab services is crucial to good outcomes and low cost as well. If a senior can be accommodated at home rather than an inpatient rehab facility or a [skilled nursing facility], they should be.”

Specifically, CMS would consider Medicaid demonstration waivers (referred to as a §1115 waiver) covering short-term stays for acute care provided in psychiatric hospitals or residential treatment centers in return for states expanding access to community-based mental health services (these proposals would waive the so-called institutions for mental diseases (IMD) exclusion, a section of the Medicaid law (within the Social Security Act) that prohibits the use of federal Medicaid funding for most inpatient psychiatric services).

“It is the responsibility of state and federal governments together, alongside communities and families, to right this wrong,” Azar said. “More treatment options are needed, and that includes more inpatient and residential options that can help stabilize Americans with serious mental illness.”

However, Azar is speaking to psychiatric illness, not Substance Use Disorders, which appear to remain the “ugly stepchild” of health care, generally.

Back in 2014, the State of Illinois asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for permission to spend $60 million in Medicaid funding to help vulnerable enrollees find and maintain stable housing, joining New York and counties in Minnesota and California in efforts to try to add housing to the list of healthcare services offered to chronically ill Medicaid patients.

New York unsuccessfully sought $75 million from the CMS to develop housing capacity for high-cost Medicaid enrollees. The state ended up removing the request from its pending Medicaid waiver. But New York continues to seek $75 million to help chronically homeless, mentally ill or otherwise vulnerable adults live independently. Assistance—including counseling, employment aid, legal and budget help and case management—would be directed at those with high Medicaid costs.

At the present time, CMS determined that waivers cannot be used to pay outright for housing. Instead, these state programs can pay for assistance in finding housing, providing home modifications, and educating beneficiaries about tenant rights.

However, CMS has paid rent for Medicaid beneficiaries in the past through grant programs. The “Money Follows the Person” (MFP) demonstration project that was launched in 2008 transitioned Medicaid enrollees from an institutional setting back into the community. 43 states including California, Texas, New Jersey, Ohio, New York, Georgia and the District of Columbia participated in the grant program. Florida opted out.

By the end of 2016, there were 9,995 participants. In 2008, 289 people participated in the demonstration, according to federal data.

Though that grant program expired on September 30, 2016, the authorizing legislation required that the Secretary of HHS provide for a national evaluation of the MFP demonstration and submit a final report to the president and Congress that presents the findings and conclusions of this evaluation. That report can be found here.

The report concluded:

MFP also provides strong evidence of success at improving the quality of life of participants. After transitioning to the community, participants experience increases across all seven quality-of-life domains measured, and the improvements are largely sustained two years post-transition. The changes in the quality of life that occur when participants move to the community are remarkable and important indicators that this demonstration has had positive impacts on participants’ lives. Estimating the value of the quality-of-life improvements reported by MFP participants would be extremely difficult, and any dollar value placed on these improvements would not adequately reflect what it means for people with significant disabilities when they can live in and contribute to their local communities.

However, it was not, and the need for more-than-adequate sober living accommodations for people in recovery from addiction should be at the top of the list when it comes to health care public policy.

As I said before, we would never make a heart surgery patient go find a hotel to recover in and we would never let insurance carriers refuse to pay for such accommodations.

Let’s hope that HHS Secretary Azar is picking up the mantle from his predecessor and continuing to move addiction treatment health care into the full medical health care continuum, rather than to accept society’s generalized and simplistic view that addicts choose to be addicts, and we should not spend valuable resources on saving their lives.

“We can support both inpatient and outpatient investments at the same time,” Azar said. “Both tools are necessary and both are too hard to access today.”

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Prior to 2016, there was no law in Florida governing the relationship between sober homes and treatment programs. Certification of recovery residences was voluntary, under the premise (and misunderstanding of legislative staffers in the State’s capitol in Tallahassee) that sober living and treatment programs were entirely separate creatures.

In other states, that may be the case and sober living has historically enjoyed an autonomy (such as the reputable Oxford House International charter model) which led to multitudes of success stories of people finding their own path to recovery and sustained sobriety.

But as Florida cemented itself as a “treatment destination”, the concept of the “sober home “ or “recovery residences” began to turn from an altruistic endeavor to a concern over where and how to house patients while they were in treatment.

By coming to Florida for treatment, patients clearly need a place to stay when not in clinical session. Under the “Florida Model” of outpatient services favored by insurance carriers and as adopted by Florida law under the “Partial Hospitalization” (PHP) level of care, housing is to be provided by the treatment provider.

For many years, the PHP model worked quite well and it simply made sense that a patient needed to be provided a place to sleep that was safe, secure, and drug/alcohol free. “Recovery support services” within the home were never required.

These homes, referred to as the “Community Housing” component of a “Day or Night Treatment with Community Housing” license, may or may not provide any form of peer-supported living. It is at the discretion of the provider.

And that is where the problem comes in, as far as the Fair Housing Act is concerned. Such a home is, by all definitions, a “house,” but is it a “boarding house?” A “dormitory?” A “hotel for addicts” while in treatment?

The Fair Housing Act (FHA) only protects “dwellings.” It also protects the right of all persons to “choose their own ‘home’.”

The FHA does supersede local zoning codes that wrongfully differentiate between homes for people related by blood or marriage and homes where people live “as the functional equivalent of a biological family” that has a known therapeutic benefit. The FHA and ADA, however, does not allow a Recovery “Bed & Breakfast” to exist wherever it wants to.

Those were “recovery residences” to be rightfully protected by the FHA.

But as the Pill Mill Epidemic became replaced with the Opioid Epidemic across the country, people quickly flocked to Google and other informational websites to try to find out what “sobriety” was and where to find it.

Newly-christened addiction treatment entrepreneurs, due in large part to the Great Recession of 2008, began snapping up residential real estate across Southeast Florida in order to provide these supposed “sober living homes” to meet the growing demand.

Then, with the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, the requirement that insurance carriers pay health care benefits to include addiction treatment fueled the growth of the industry. However, the barrier to entry was (and remains) rather low, and the housing component remains a necessary part in order to have somewhere to “keep” patients while not providing them with clinical services.

Thus, the “Sober Home” problem began as boarding houses for people brand-new to recovery replaced reputable sober living.

In addition, some newer providers of PHP level of services decided to market their housing as the selling point for coming to South Florida; clinical services were secondary, if mentioned at all. To that point, the only requirement to enjoying such a [free] life of leisure was attendance at the housing provider’s off-site clinical treatment location.

This new reality caused local elected officials to plea to the federal government to revisit the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, stating that those laws never intended for residential neighborhoods to become de facto hospital districts for persons just released from post-relapse Detoxification services and newly placed into PHP programs. At a minimum, they argued, there should be some modicum of standard for such housing no different than Assisted Living or any other form of supervised group living arrangement. Stated otherwise, the FHA and ADA do not trump those regulations; why does sober living associated with a treatment program get a free pass?

To begin to bring some level of objectivity to the field, the Florida Association of Recovery Residences (FARR), a sister-organization to the National Alliance of Recovery Residences (NARR), began to seek voluntary certification of sober living residences so that the established homes could differentiate themselves from the new upstarts.

And by 2015, the Florida Legislature elected to formalize that process by directing DCF to identify an entity to credential Recovery Residences. While voluntary in nature, all licensed treatment providers could not make any refer to a sober living residence if that home was not certified.

Being the only game in town, FARR applied to be the credentialing agency and was thereafter delegated the authority to serve in that administrative capacity.

However, the problem of unregulated sober homes only continued to flourish, as the clear nexus between the locations of overdose deaths and unregulated “sober homes” became abundantly clear.

More had to be done, and faster.

By 2016, the Florida Legislature asked the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office to begin conducting a fact-finding mission to determine, fairly and objectively, what was actually “happening on the ground.”

These new laws, adopted in 2017, sought amongst other protections to clarify unequivocally that treatment centers and sober living residences were regulated by different entities, and that any referral to any sober living residence by a treatment center, whether owned by the treatment center or not, was now to be regulated.

As of July 1, 2018, all sober living residences to which treatment centers were to make a referral of any type had to be certified.

In order to address the long-standing relationship between treatment providers and housing components under the PHP level of care, the Florida Legislature gave all providers until July 1, 2018 (a full year) to become certified.

The reason for the year-long delay was for purposes of fundamental fairness – treatment providers needed to both have their sober living residences certified by FARR as well as secure the services of a Certified Recovery Residence Administrator (CRRA) through approval by the Florida Certification Board.

Even then, the statute provides that DCF may only begin fining violations as of June 2019.

Still, notwithstanding the well-publicized passage of this law in early 2017 and its signature by Governor Rick Scott by May of that year, many providers continued to claim confusion, based upon misinformation circulated by “consultants” or typical “word of mouth” rumors which are all-too-rampant in the addiction treatment space.

Still, many providers DID follow the law and sought FARR certification long before the deadline of July 1st.

One such provider was Amethyst Recovery Center in St. Lucie County, Florida.

However, Amethyst was ultimately denied FARR certification for its recovery residences, clearly compromising its ability to continue its PHP program.

In response, attorneys for Amethyst filed what is referred to as a “Petition for Declaratory Statement” with DCF, seeking clarification as to whether the housing component of a PHP program must be FARR certified.

Most recently, DCF issued a clearly worded notice on May 29, 2018 to all providers, reaffirming the plain language of the statute that any referral to made to any non-FARR certified recovery residence after July 1, 2018 would be a violation of state statute.

While the outcome of Amethyst’s Petition is now in the hands of DCF, and maybe ultimately the courts, the law has not been suspended, particularly at the local level, where various cities now require FARR certification as a condition of obtaining local zoning approval.

So why are we even commenting on this issue if it is so apparently undecided?

Candidly, we take great offense at the apparent opportunism that some are exhibiting, claiming the “confusion” is due to “random, misleading emails from organizations within the drug and alcohol treatment industry” as to whether PHP housing must be FARR certified, which confusion has been “fueled by the new questionable laws that were passed.”

Such statements are not only wrong, they are irresponsible.

It doesn’t take a lawyer to know that the Florida Legislature said what it meant, and meant what it said. Either one is living under a rock, or is in denial about the state of affairs of sober living in Florida and the country as a whole.

But putting all of that aside, what everyone is missing is the most obvious – certification is an additional burden placed upon treatment providers that compromises their ability as to where they can house their patients, for which insurance refuses to pay.

Since that housing is not reimbursed by insurance, any additional regulatory burden comes out of the treatment center’s bottom line.

But the other side of the argument is even more pressing – the FHA and, by compliment, the ADA, guarantees “fair” housing choices for those who desire to live in a sober living environment.

PHP patients, by the very nature of PHP housing as well as Res. 5 housing, inherently do NOT choose their own housing. No differently than a hospital patient does not pick and choose which bed to be placed in after surgery.

Moreover, the FHA and ADA only protect “dwellings” which term has a specific federal definition under those laws.

A treatment provider has no inherent federal protections to select a single-family home in a residential neighborhood as a place to house their patients while the residents are in a Partial Hospitalization level of care.

Under long-standing and prevailing law developed under the Fair Housing Act, treatment providers do not enjoy superior rights to zoning laws to house their patients wherever they choose, any more than Hospitals or Institutions do.

However, a “Recovery Residence” does enjoy higher protections, because it can be objectively determined that peer-supported community based living is taking place both inside and outside of the home.

While I understand and an sympathetic to what Amethyst and similar providers are concerned with, their challenge of the law may be causing them to walk right into a trap.

Here is the issue, boiled down to a plain reading of the statutes and rules:

397.311(26)(a)3, Fla. Stat. – “Day or night treatment with community housing” means a program intended for individuals who can benefit from living independentlyin peer community housingwhile participating in treatment services for a minimum of 5 hours a day for a minimum of 25 hours per week.

397.311(37), Fla. Stat. – “Recovery residence” means a residential dwelling unit, or other form of group housing, that is offered or advertised through any means, including oral, written, electronic, or printed means, by any person or entity as a residence that provides apeer-supported, alcohol free, and drug-free living environment.

Rule 65D-30.0081(1) – “Day or night treatment with community housing is appropriate for clients who do not require structured, 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week residential treatment. This component allows clients to live in a supportive, community housing location while participating in treatment.”

Without FARR certification, what objective criteria are we going to use to demonstrate that a treatment center is providing peer community housing, rather than simply providing a “boarding house” to patients while in treatment?

A decision by DCF that PHP or Res. 5 housing need not be FARR certified would give local governments the ammunition they need (and have been desperately waiting for) to say that those “medical boarding houses” can no longer exist in single-family residences or even multi-family zoning districts, but rather may only be in zoning districts for transient housing for medical patients.

A Recovery Residence can be a person’s “home” even if residency is temporary such as at a PHP level of care, but only if the home can meet specific standards proving that unrelated cohabitation is necessary for therapeutic reasons, and which proof can be objectively qualified and quantified. The US Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development agree on this point.

Perhaps most realistic, I do not know of a civil rights attorney in the nation who is going to go into battle over whether PHP housing has the right to exist in any residential neighborhood if there is no ability to demonstrate through evidence that the cohabitation is necessary for therapeutic reasons. Certification of FARR Level 3 and 4 housing creates a rebuttable presumption that the resident medically benefits from such sober living. Simply housing patients in a home while because they need a place to stay while in clinical treatment does not meet that standard.

Perhaps it should. But under the law, it does not.

There is a saying that “bad facts make bad law.” Providers who object to housing oversight and meeting minimum housing standards are further entrenching policymakers that the industry itself is not mature enough to be trusted and that it places profit above patient protection.

On the other hand, those familiar with the Parity Act need to find a way to take a stand that sober living is the “yin” to clinical treatment’s “yang” and the refusal to pay for credible recovery residential services is no different than paying for medical treatment but not the necessary post-surgical residential rehabilitation care.

Either way, within the treatment and housing space, it always seems that the realities of the demands of free market enterprise to conflicts with healthcare policy on an all-too-frequent basis. Perhaps recently announced collaboration between SAMHSA and NARR will drive the federal government to bring some sanity to an otherwise insane industry without making access to care inaccessible. But in the meantime, the law is what the law says, not what we want it to be.

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On March 22, 2018, April 17, 2018 (yesterday), the U.S. GAO (Government Accountability Office, an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress, often called the “congressional watchdog,” that investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars) issued Report GAO 18-315, “Substance Use Disorder: Information on Recovery Housing Prevalence, Selected States’ Oversight, and Funding.” The report was released to the public yesterday, April 17, 2018. The full report can be accessed here.

According to the press release, the GAO looked at federal health care funding for recovery homes, as well as the actions of five states—Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, Texas, and Utah—to investigate and oversee these homes in their states.

What GAO Found

Nationwide prevalence of recovery housing—peer-run or peer-managed drug- and alcohol-free supportive housing for individuals in recovery from substance use disorder (SUD)—is unknown, as complete data are not available. National organizations collect data on the prevalence and characteristics of recovery housing but only for a subset of recovery homes. For example, the National Alliance for Recovery Residences, a national nonprofit and recovery community organization that promotes quality standards for recovery housing, collects data only on recovery homes that seek certification by one of its 15 state affiliates that actively certify homes. The number of homes that are not certified by this organization is unknown.

Four of the five states that GAO reviewed—Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Utah—have conducted, or are in the process of conducting, investigations of recovery housing activities in their states, and three of these four states have taken formal steps to enhance oversight. The fifth state, Texas, had not conducted any such investigations at the time of GAO’s review. Fraudulent activities identified by state investigators included schemes in which recovery housing operators recruited individuals with SUD to specific recovery homes and treatment providers, who then billed patients’ insurance for extensive and unnecessary drug testing for the purposes of profit. For example, officials from the Florida state attorney’s office told GAO that SUD treatment providers were paying $300 to $500 or more per week to recovery housing operators for every patient they referred for treatment and were billing patients’ insurance for hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary drug testing over the course of several months. Some of these investigations have resulted in arrests and other actions, such as changes to insurance payment policies. Florida, Massachusetts, and Utah established state certification or licensure programs for recovery housing in 2014 and 2015 to formally increase oversight. The other two states in GAO’s review—Ohio and Texas—had not passed such legislation but were providing training and technical assistance to recovery housing managers.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), administers two federal health care grants for SUD prevention and treatment that states may use to establish recovery homes and for related activities.

First, under its Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment block grant, SAMHSA makes at least $100,000 available annually to each state to provide loans to organizations seeking to establish recovery homes.

Second, states have discretion to use SAMHSA funding available under a 2-year grant for 2017 and 2018 primarily for opioid use disorder treatment services, to establish recovery homes or for recovery housing-related activities. Of the five states GAO reviewed, only two, Texas and Ohio, have used any of their SAMHSA grant funds for these purposes. Four of the five states—Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Texas—have also used state general revenue funds to establish additional recovery homes.

HHS had no comments on this report.

Why GAO Did This Study

Substance abuse and illicit drug use, including the use of heroin and the misuse of or dependence on alcohol and prescription opioids, is a growing problem in the United States. Individuals with SUD may face challenges in remaining drug- and alcohol-free. Recovery housing can offer safe, supportive, drug- and alcohol-free housing to help these individuals maintain their sobriety and can be an important resource for individuals recovering from SUD. However, the media has reported allegations about potentially fraudulent practices on the part of some recovery homes in some states.

GAO was asked to examine recovery housing in the United States. This report examines (1) what is known about the prevalence and characteristics of recovery housing across the United States; (2) investigations and actions selected states have undertaken to oversee such housing; and (3) SAMHSA funding for recovery housing, and how states have used this or any available state funding. GAO reviewed national and state data, federal funding guidance, and interviewed officials from SAMHSA, national associations, and five states—Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, Texas, and Utah—selected based on rates of opioid overdose deaths, dependence on or abuse of alcohol and other drugs, and other criteria. State information is intended to be illustrative and is not generalizable to all states.